


Thought and Memory 1: Remembrance

by Raven (Temaris)



Series: Thought and Memory [1]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Gen, Original Character(s), Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-26
Updated: 2011-11-26
Packaged: 2017-10-26 13:36:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Temaris/pseuds/Raven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One year later, each of six men remember, and deal with the remembrance, in their own way.</p><p>NB, whatever this looks like, it is not a deathfic. More of a ...near miss.</p><p>Work in progress, parts 1 to 5 are posted here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thought and Memory 1: Remembrance

"Agent Nicholson! Don't!" Lucy Sayers gripped his arm tightly, stopping Agent Mark Nicholson before he entered the office.

He jerked his arm out of her grasp and glared at her, "Miss Sayers, what is the matter?"

"Don't go in, not just yet. Today's--"

"Today is exceptionally busy, and I don't have time for this." He took a couple of steps away.

"Mr. Nicholson," Lucy's tone was annoyed, "Sure, go in there. Get yourself fired. See if I bother helping you on *anything* ever again."

Nicholson froze. "What exactly do you mean," he hissed, taking one long step back and leaning over Lucy's desk.

"It's a year today. They're kind of having a hard time with it, okay? If you do your usual thing Larabee'll throw you out a window -- and the others will tell IA you tripped." Her face drew into sad lines. "If I were you, I'd find some place to be, and give Larabee a call to let him know."

"What, because that little punk went native on an undercover job," Mark sneered. "I don't think so. It's about time people stopped making allowances, and accepted reality."

Lucy's eyes narrowed then widened and she subsided into her chair, eyes firmly on her computer.

"And what reality would that be, Mr. Nicholson?" Standish's voice set every hair on the back of Nicholson's neck on end.

"I -- I was just talking generally," he tried to cover.

"Really. So the 'little punk' to whom you so intemperately referred would not be our missing comrade."

"Absolutely not." Mark lied flatly. He mistook his mark.

"Liar." Standish turned on his heel. "I strongly urge you to refrain from inflicting your tedious presence on myself, or any other member of the team for the remainder of today." He didn't so much as look back before closing the door behind him.

"Who died and made him queen," Mark smirked at his slur, then pulled his face into something more professional looking at Lucy's disapproving scowl. "Hell with it. I'll be in computer forensics lab on fourth."

"I'll be sure and let them know."

Lucy watched Mark Nicholson disappear back into the elevator and sighed with relief. Team Seven didn't need his attitude on this day.

May eighteenth, 2004. A year to the day when JD Dunne had vanished.

\-------------------------------------------------------------------

Buck's desk was nearly clear. He absently hit save and lifted the next folder. Report on the Larson explosives fraud. He propped it between his lap and the desk and flipped through it. Nothing left to do but write his report on the case. He slid it back onto the desk, pulled up the report template to start filling it in.

He stopped for a split second, as always, as the copyright notice popped up. Yeah. There it was.

(c) J. D. Dunne, M7 Enterprises Inc.

A sad smile appeared for the merest fraction of a second. Where are you, kid? He let the thought go. It had taken all year to reach this point. Not staying behind eight extra hours, searching for him electronically. Not walking the streets, asking dangerous questions of dangerous people. Not thinking, every time he turned around, where are you, kid?

He resolutely didn't look at the calendar. He wasn't dead. Sometimes he thought that was the only reason that he hadn't gone Larabee's route. There was no proof. There had been no body. And for all Madison had been convicted of kidnapping a federal agent, he'd sworn blind JD had saved himself. Had left long before the FBI broke into his offices. Had not been killed by him.

Which left the question. Where was he?

No. JD would come back when he could. He had a report to write.

\-----------------------------

Tanner watched from his own office across the way. It had once been JD's, but they'd moved everyone around when that bastard Nicholson started, just to ensure that he didn't get to sit in JD's place. Even if he was taking the kid's job, they weren't going to let him have the kid's place.

He sighed and turned back to his own machine, examining ballistics reports. A year.

They were planning on having a wake, even if that wasn't what he'd called it when he had proposed it to the team, this weekend out at Larabee's place. Almost everyone would be there. Everyone who had known the kid, who had loved the kid. He sighed.

Some of them would not be there. Not Buck, who had given up his apartment and moved in with Larabee, at the man's insistence, taking all the kid's stuff with him. Nor Casey who still wore JD's ring, as though faith alone would keep him alive.

Vin made no effort to lie to himself. He faced reality square and accepted that Dunne was dead. Madison had just been too clever for them.

One day, Madison would die too.

\-------------------------------------------

Josiah worked his way through his letters first. He had turned the computer on, but emails got his second priority despite the Bureau's new policy of encouraging the paperless office. Conferences. Seminars. A possible book for the profiling unit's collection; he put the leaflet neatly in his third tray, and carried on. An invoice, re-addressed three times already. He crossed out his name and scrawled another on the already crowded envelope. Perhaps Isabel Naismith in Chemical Forensics? A handwritten letter.

He turned it over thoughtfully. No return address. Did he recognise the handwriting? He leaned back in his chair and stared at it, letting his mind idle until it matched a name. Heavy press of the pen. Spiky forward leaning script. Someone anxious, in a hurry. Black ink, possibly someone in business, probably male. The rounded 'o's in the address suggested that the writer did not normally write so aggressively.

No. If he had ever known it the name had gone, or the resemblance to the normal script was too distant to make the connection he was sure he could. He slit the envelope open. A photograph fell out, along with a note scrawled on a torn piece of notepaper. The picture fell face down and he righted it as he read the note. All it said, in the same spiky handwriting, was 'WHO AM I?!'

The picture was in sepia tones, and he stared at it for nearly five minutes before allowing himself to stand and walk slowly out of his office. He found a large envelope and lifted each item with a pair of forensic tweezers into it.

"Josiah? Problem?" Tanner peered in the door, clearly curious.

"I need to take this down to one of our laboratories," Josiah said calmly. He had to remain calm. He took another deep, peaceful breath.

"What's in it?" Tanner asked, more worried now by Sanchez' evasiveness and the tells that showed as clearly as large print Josiah's anxiety, rage, and, he frowned, joy?

"Crows." Josiah said enigmatically, and walked around him. "If you'll excuse me."

\------------------------------------------------------------

Chris Larabee stared away across into the mountains. He'd told Buck to take the day too, but the man had insisted he would rather be in work, distracted. Larabee felt exactly the opposite. Work was the last place he'd seen the kid. The last place he'd spoken to him, a short phone call only a day before he failed to send an email. A mere two days before he failed to make a meet. Five days before Madison was arrested and Dunne had gone from missing, to MIA.

Work was the last place he wanted to be today.

JD had died as he'd lived, without leaving a single person who had known him unmoved. Larabee had shed no tears. He added another name to the select list of people who he silently remembered at waking, at sleeping, and in every raised glass, and never spoke of him again.

Quark needed the exercise.

He headed up into the hills. There was a place there, away from almost all living things, where he would sit and not think. Watch the sky, follow the eagles' flight; listen to the running river and the distant calls of birds, and not think at all. Much less remember.

\----------------------------------------------

Nathan was in late. He'd taken longer than he expected at the florists, and then the traffic was ridiculously heavy on the way to the memorial garden. Denver's law enforcement community kept a small, quiet memorial outside the State Patrol Academy. JD's name wasn't there. He wasn't officially dead, because his next of kin refused to take the first steps towards acknowledging it.

Nathan shook his head sadly. They couldn't declare him dead without a body, but there was no doubt in his mind. If JD Dunne could have come back to them, he would have.

He'd laid his flowers at the memorial, and stepped by, whispering a soft,'God be with you.'. It was his only way to acknowledge what he believed in his heart. His only way left to remember a fine young man, and mark his passing. Chris would not speak of him. Buck could not admit he was dead. God only knew what Ezra thought. Vin and Josiah had accepted the truth with bleak melancholy, but still refused to force the other two to admit it. But even if they refused to believe, the regret and sorrow that they all felt needed expression. It was tearing the team apart.

He glanced down the corridor. Josiah's office was empty, though he could see the screensaver reflected in the window. Ezra's door was closed. He wondered if he should check on the man, and sighed. He'd leave it till lunchtime. Drag him out for a sandwich. Buck was working steadily, door open, his desk as tidy and neat as it had once been messy and decorated in pictures and toys. Reflexively he looked in JD's office and found Tanner looking back at him.

"Vin."

"Hey, Nathan," he half smiled.

"Chris in?"

"Not today."

"I forgot," he shook his head at his memory. Of course. He'd taken the day off. He frowned as he walked into his own little office and settled. He'd better not be drowning his sorrows in alcohol. Another anniversary to hate. Each one seemed almost harder to bear. Christmas had been spent working, the whole team by common, silent consent electing to ignore the holiday. Thanksgiving had been ignored. They'd all still been looking on July 18, the two month anniversary and JD's birthday. No one had gotten drunk. They'd still been too focussed on finding their brother.

His lips pulled into a sour grimace. A month later Travis had pulled Larabee and the rest of the team in and told them to stop looking. That JD was now officially missing presumed dead. When Buck had lost his tenuous grip on his temper Josiah and Nathan had restrained him, as Travis warned over his yells that if they did not resume their normal caseload he would be obliged to suspend them.

He suspected that Travis's timing was entirely deliberate. And he more than suspected that Buck hadn't given up looking. He blinked rapidly. Crying wouldn't cure anything. Buck was quieter these days. Something in his eyes had gone, leaving an emptiness that nothing really filled. He still flirted and dated, but the relationships were fewer; and Buck never threw himself into the game, as though making sure that his heart stayed safely out of reach.

Nathan could hardly blame him for that.

He vaguely wondered where Nicholson was. It wasn't like the man to have the tact to not show up. He'd half expected him to be lurking by his door telling him of all the things he had done better, faster, quicker or more efficiently than JD. The man was always comparing himself to his predecessor, trying to make his team mates see that he was worth having. He didn't get that for Team Seven, there was no comparison. He pitied the man. Maybe he was a better technician, or surveillance expert. Maybe he wasn't. But JD was lost, and none of them wanted to hear it.


End file.
